Grading Gives Me Gray Hair

Grading . . . the bane of my existence. In my perfect education world, we would do away with grades. I hate giving my 8th graders grades because grades don't encourage learning, they encourage earning points and don't encourage taking risks - like reading a book outside of your favorite genre, trying a new way of writing, making a hypothesis you know might not be correct once you prove it, thinking outside the box. Grades force kids to stay within their comfort zones because that way they know they can "get the points."

I've been struggling with the concept of grades for several years now, and I still have no way of making grading better for my students which will fit in with our school's system. Our school is supposed to be standards-based, but, let's face it, it's not. The kids earn a score of 0, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, or 4, but then those scores are turned into letter grades, which again makes the focus on letter grades and not learning. We have formatives (20% of grade) and summatives (80% of grade), but teachers do weird things with these. For example, finding three pictures for a notebook cover counts as a summative. Huh? (There are way more examples of summatives that shouldn't count as summatives, but I'm not going to out teachers.)

At the beginning of the year, I tried going grade-less. I wanted to give students more feedback on what they are doing well and where they can use some improvement, but that hasn't gone well. For one, I am expected to teach the same as my 8th grade English partner. We are different people. This isn't a good or a bad thing, but it holds me back from teaching in a way I want to teach. This isn't her fault, and it isn't my fault. Expecting two teachers to teach the same is not effective - at least for me. Thank goodness she understands my craziness and is accepting of my ideas, but I still am not teaching the way I want to teach my students.

My students know I have high expectations of them, which they have talked to me about, but what happens when my expectations are higher than other 8th grade teachers. For example, an assignment for another content area was left in the next door teacher's classroom. I happened to see it and noticed the student received a 3 (which converts to an A- and all the student cares about) but they were missing the required reflection. On our school's assessment scale a 3 represents substantial, effective, thorough. How does a student earn a 3 when they are missing their reflection? How is leaving out this essential part of the assignment substantial, effective, and thorough?

For the most part at our school, if a student completes an assignment (formative or summative) they receive a good grade because I feel we are forced to give good scores/grades. Over and over, I hear students say, "Why didn't I get a 4? I turned it in." This needs to stop. Our kids are expecting As because they completed an assignment - with no care about how well their thinking was demonstrated. Teachers are afraid to give low scores because we are afraid that we will be seen as bad teachers, but kids can re-do summatives so we should be giving feedback to help our kids improve their learning.

About five years ago, I taught Advanced Language Arts at an affluent middle school (for one year), and the kids were not happy with their learning in general. They were frustrated that their learning wasn't in-depth. They said they learned enough to pass the test in their subjects only to forget the material after the test. Part of this is because of grades. Grades are the focus for students and parents alike. It's difficult to learn something in-depth when we are asked to always have grades in the grade book. How do you really learn something well? By being graded on what you are learning all the time? Learning requires time, but we don't give kids time. We give kids assignments in which they must show immediate mastery of a topic because if they don't their grades go down. This means teachers water down the content - learning becomes more about breadth than depth.

Another struggle I have with grading is how grades become tied to rewards (think PBIS). I flat out disagree with taking away school privileges and activities because a student is not passing a class. I understand why schools do this. We try to incentivize good grades, but what actually happens is the opposite of learning. Kids who need to increase their grades to participate in the school PBIS reward complete their missing formatives or summatives as quick as they can just so they can attend the activity. They will earn enough points to get to the activity but will not actually learn the material. In this way, the school is promoting points and not actual learning.

I have more thoughts on grading, but this post has drained me. Will write more at a later date.

What are your thoughts about grading? Please share in the comments.